On and around Canada Day, I found myself thinking, as I often do, about how easy it is to believe we earn our good fortune. I am very grateful that I live in Canada but I’m also willing to admit that I didn’t exactly make my own luck. I was born here and I had nothing to do with that fact.

We often hear people griping about “foreigners” or “landed immigrants” or “refugees”, insisting that some people have a right to live in Canada and some don’t. Ironically, those are the very people whose opinions should probably count the most — after all, they chose to live here. The rest of us were simply dropped into relative luxury from our mother’s wombs. Maybe it’s all part of a creator’s plan; I don’t know. But I do know that if we take on an attitude of arrogance, a belief that we are somehow entitled to a better way of life than others simply because we were born into a resource- and space-rich piece of land that is defined by arbitrary (and occasionally disputed) borders, we are on pretty shaky logical ground.

There may be no simple answer to how mankind should sort itself about who lives where, but I can’t think of a single good reason why we should be able to deny anyone the freedom of movement about the world, other than for purely selfish motivations.

Canadians tend to think we are generous, peaceful, sharing people. We think we are then envy of much of the world and that we are admired for those perceived qualities. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest we have too high an opinion of ourselves. Generous? Our neighbours to the south make more than twice the charitable contributions that we do. A Fraser Institute study shows we donate three-quarters of one per cent of our income to registered charities while Americans turn over about 1.77 per cent. Admittedly, that figure doesn’t distinguish between churches and other charities, as evidenced by the fact that Utahans (with its high percentage of Mormons, who are asked to tithe 10 per cent of their earnings) lead all states with a 3.71 per cent rate donation rate.

Our parsimonious attitude extends to the federal government, too, which has for decades fallen far short of reasonable goals for aid to other countries. We talk a good game on the world stage, but we really don’t have a genuinely independent foreign policy plan — mostly we follow the United States’s lead, just as we do in environmental matters. Now, under the Harper government, what we do give to less fortunate countries has strings attached that others share our own values before we help them out.

The facts would seem to indicate that we are pretty complacent about how we use our resources. Our energy use is astonishing and we pump out pollution at a rate that would embarrass most developing countries, even if they could afford to be as wasteful. We’re more than happy to take the investment dollars from other countries to develop the Alberta oilsands, even though current technology makes it an extremely wasteful and damaging enterprise. We actively encourage emigration of the wealthy from India and doctors from South Africa, not caring a whit about the effect on those countries.

All this is not to suggest we aren’t, most of us, good people who want to work hard to help others. Our local Rotary clubs, for instance, spend money and much personal effort to provide clean water, education and housing to poverty-stricken countries like Honduras. Communities and individuals across the country can share similar stories.

If we are smug and overly selective in our sharing, though, (and if we take a self-interested attitude, like many Americans are now doing with Mexicans who have crossed into their country without the requisite paperwork) we shouldn’t be surprised when the day comes that other more populace and less resource-blessed countries simply begin arriving en masse to take their share of what we have always assumed is ours to do with as we please.

Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.